


Depth Over Distance

by Micheoff



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: First Kiss, Fluff, Fluff without Plot, M/M, Warm and Fuzzy Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-28
Updated: 2015-02-28
Packaged: 2018-03-15 10:25:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3443723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Micheoff/pseuds/Micheoff
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ray and Michael's first times together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Depth Over Distance

**Author's Note:**

  * For [birdpeeps](https://archiveofourown.org/users/birdpeeps/gifts).



> I want to wish Viri (AKA Birdpeeps, AKA MadKingRay) a very happy birthday. I'm not good with much, but hopefully this is good enough for your birthday! Thank you for putting up with me and I hope you have a great birthday.

The first time Ray realizes he is definitely feeling something more than strictly platonic towards Michael, they are both sitting out in Michael’s car, parked in Ray’s apartment lot.

They're safe from the flurry of snow just outside the car, Texas weather having went to rack and ruin in the span of a month, and the vents on Michael's car shutter and shake with the effort of pushing heat out to warm them. Their hands are so close together over the console, gloved and partially covered by the sleeve cuffs of their coats, that Ray swears he can feel the heat coming from Michael’s palms. Neither of them break the short distance between them, the depth of their nervousness quivering around them, their bodies motionless as if the weather has worked its way under their coats and iced over their timid bones.

“Thanks for the… um… ride home,” Ray murmurs, his voice so quiet over the rumble of the car that Michael has to lean over to make the words out.

The sputtering heater blows warm air over their damp and frosted shoes, soft snow tracked and melted onto the floorboards from not wasting their time kicking their shoes off before getting in. Either most of the snow has already melted from the drive over or the time they’ve spent just sitting there while in park, frozen to their seats with their heads turned close together, he can’t tell, but he feels the cold seeping through his socks.

Ray could kiss him. He could, right now.

Michael is red nosed and breathing quicker in anticipation for it the longer they sit there, his cheeks cherry red and lips chapped from the cold air. He’s waiting for Ray to do something, because it’s supposed to be Ray’s choice — to go inside by himself or to invite Michael up. Michael’s left hand taps a beat into the wheel with his thumb, a drumming that’s a lot like the ticking on a clock in that it’s slow and measured, albeit going a little erratic when Ray makes any sudden movement.

“Yeah.” Michael clears his throat, nodding as his eyes drop down to Ray’s lips and then back up to his eyes. “Anytime, man.”

Ray blinks at him owlishly for a few seconds, mouth parted open on a suggestion he can’t get out, his throat uncomfortably tight. His lips have suddenly turned dry and he licks at them, not noticing the way Michael’s hand tightens over the console. Something passes between them and Ray knows it’s something he should think about or maybe ask Michael about, but he’s tired, so tired, and doesn’t want to think about what exactly that something is just yet.

He swallows tightly and scratches at the untidy stubble on his chin.

“I’m going to go play some, uh, Destiny if you want to come up with me? We can watch the new Grumps video if you want,” Ray offers, hands pulling together in his lap after he zips up his coat in preparation for running into his apartment.

They both look at each other and there’s a moment where they’re just trapped looking, reading each other’s expressions and trying to get on the same level, trying to figure out what this is and what the other wants. After a moment, Michael leans back against his seat and puts both of his hands on the wheel, turning his head to look out of the window and over the snow covered ground. His breath blows out over the glass and makes the window fog up, Ray watching quietly.

He must’ve garnered something from the look that Ray hadn’t.

“Nah, I’m just gonna head home and get some sleep. Gotta be up early to film a, uh, Full Play tomorrow. Y’know, work stuff.” Michael shrugs slightly, mouth turning down.

It’s a lie, Ray can tell, but he doesn’t want to call him out on it.

“Okay. Well. Um. Have a good night, then, Michael,” Ray says, getting out of the car and jogging up to his apartment before he can think about what just happened.

When he’s closed the door behind himself, he lets out a shuddering breath.

“Good one, Ray,” he tells himself sarcastically. “Fucking idiot. Who invites people up with Destiny? _Idiots_.”

He scrubs at his face and groans loudly, kicking off his shoes and padding over to his kitchen to get some leftovers from the day before. He pulls out a tupperware container full of pasta and heads into the living room, prepared to spend a lonely evening watching videos by himself and playing games. He tries to convince himself that he isn’t totally crushed, but he’s never been a good liar in the first place.

•••

The first time Michael realizes that he is developing a crush on Ray, they are in the middle of filming a video for the channel.

Geoff is going on and on about the rules, drawing the intro out by pausing to talk to Gavin about something irrelevant, and normally he would be paying attention, but Ray is leaning over his desk to whisper to him conspiratorially and he just _has_ to listen. How could he not when Ray’s eyes are glittering and he’s entirely too close to him? He can practically _taste_ the mint from the toothpaste Ray must have used that morning.

“Think we could get away with just walking out of here?” Ray asks, hushed, while looking from Michael to Geoff and back to Michael again. His hand is put up between them to hide what he’s saying from Geoff (though Michael doubts Geoff could read lips in the first place).

Michael smirks, moving his chair to crowd over to Ray, and scratches at his head. “I don’t think so. Geoff would have our asses if we tried to escape now.”

He knows the mics are right there — ready to capture anything they’d say, though surely whoever would edit the video would turn their mics down out of respect — and Kdin is recording all of it, but he can’t help but to look at Ray’s lips as their heads are tipped so close together.

He could kiss Ray so easily right then, in that moment, in their office with their friends not paying attention to them. The thought crashes through his mind like playing freeze tag, every look from Ray unleashing the dam and every touch freezing it, fixing every crack in the structure.

Ray catches him looking and he quickly looks back up, cheeks burning, and their eyes meet. Ray swallows something down, throat clicking over the humdrum of everyone else’s voices behind them.

“You boys having a nice time over there?” Geoff calls over to them suddenly (or maybe not, maybe he’s been calling out to them for a while now and Michael just hadn’t noticed), standing in the middle of the room with his eyebrows climbing up his forehead the longer Michael and Ray just watch each other. The mic is held up to his mouth to catch the question and Gavin is laughing into his own, all of the sudden loud in the right side of Michael’s headset.

Michael pulls back first, clearing his throat and rubbing a hand over the back of his neck. Ray does the same after a long moment of looking over Michael’s face in something like wonder and curiosity, pulling back and straightening in his seat. Ray grabs his controller up in his hands and turns on his Xbox.

“Uh-huh. We were discussing our escape plans. I tried to convince Michael to just take me out since I'd just drag him down if we tried to make a run for it, but he’s too much of a softy and wouldn’t do it. Not even when I offered him my gamerscore,” Ray says, his voice mockingly affronted.

Geoff snorts and turns to look into the viewfinder of Lindsay’s camera.

He points to the both of them and smiles wide. “Well, you’re not getting out of this that easily.” He twirls his mustache and turns back to the other guys. “Okay, first one to beat a game of Monopoly before Ray quits his job, _go_!”

•••

Michael kissed Ray for the first time on a Friday afternoon, both of them standing outside of Stage 5 with their hands buried deep in their pockets and their indiscretions nagging at the backs of their minds.

He found himself shoulder to shoulder with Ray by accident, really. Both of them had stayed behind to work on their respective videos and by the time Michael had finished Ray had already left — or so he thought, because Ray was actually just waiting at the door for him, it seemed.

So he kissed Ray on a Friday afternoon with his glasses set askew and his coat swallowing him up in its warmth. It doesn’t exactly surprise him, because he’s thought about it too much for the kiss itself to surprised him, but nothing could have prepared him for the way Ray's fingers would push under his coat and brush along the skin of his hipbone, all of his breath leaving him.

It's rapture.

•

He pushes open the exit door with his elbow as he puts on his beanie, bustling through the door and then immediately stopping with a shock of horror. There’s rain coming down on the pavement like a force to be reckoned with, hitting it so hard that Michael wonders how he missed the explosive pounding noises in the first place, and Michael knows instantaneously that his commute home has come to a halt.

It’s not the rain that’s the problem — oh, no, that’d be too easy — it’s the furious crash of  _hail_  raining down.

Michael hasn’t seen hail in person since early 2010, way back when he was still living in New Jersey.

Hail is known to not be his friend after that one time when he’d just exited a gas station, then made the mistake of looking up in the rain and at that exact second a piece of hail came down and nailed him right in the eye — a direct hit that would have been hilarious had the MLG horns that Ray plays all the time in the office went off. He was partially blind for three days after and he spent most of that time being miserable, whining, and demanding that his older brothers take care of him.

So he’s never liked or appreciated hail since that horrible time in his life and he quickly presses himself up against the door, thankful for the awning above him. Cursing, he crosses his arms over his chest and glares out towards the offending bits of hail strewn about on the ground.

“I know, right? When was the last time it hailed in Texas? The fuckin’ forties?”

Michael startles, head turning to look at Ray so fast that he worries about getting whiplash.

“Jesus Christ, Ray! Could you be anymore quiet?” he asks rhetorically. He turns to Ray fully and rests his shoulder on the door, ignoring the handle pushing against his ribs uncomfortably; he’s got to play it off like he didn’t just practically jump out of his skin because Ray scared him. “Seriously. Where’d you come from?”

Ray shrugs. “I’m the one who was here first. You just ignored me.”

“Nah, pretty sure you just appeared there. Like out of a dream or in a puff of smoke.”

“Is that the line you use on all of the ladies? Make their panties drop like that?”

Michael snorts, pushing his glasses up.

“Pretty sure I wouldn’t be dropping anything but my dignity if I used that line on someone.”

Ray holds up a finger, tutting.

“But didn’t you just use it on me?” His eyes are full of mirth and Michael takes the time to look over him without saying anything.

Ray seems small in his coat, one that his mom had both bought and sent out to him the second the weather started going all out of whack in Texas, because lord knows that Ray would never willing buy his own coat and actually take care of himself, and he’s rubbing his hands together to try and get some warmth in them. He brings them to his mouth and blows as much hot air onto them as he can, cheeks puffing out. He casts a glance over to Michael and it has Michael straightening quickly.

“Didn’t you have gloves to wear? The ones Ryan bought you?” Michael deflects, clearing his throat.

“Gloves? I — Oh, shit! I knew I was forgetting something!” Ray digs into his pockets and pulls out a pair of plain black gloves, making a noise of triumph as he holds them high in the air. “You just saved me from frostbite, Michael.”

Michael laughs with a shake of his shoulders. “Little dramatic, but I’ll take it. You owe me your life now, or your hands, I guess.”

“Mhm. So… how’re we gonna get outta here? Got a plan or…?”

“Well,” he starts, looking back out towards the rain and hail, “I think my car is pretty close, so I could definitely give you a lift home.” Ray’s face lights up with relief. “I don’t think we’ll be able to make it through this hail, though. They’ll find us knocked out on the pavement tomorrow morning, probably.”

“I knew I was going to go out like this,” Ray faux grumbles, shaking his head.

“I thought you said that the next time we were forced to play Monopoly in Minecraft would do it?”

“That too,” Ray acquiesces. “Got anything to admit to me now before we’re brutalized by the hail, Michael? Any life affirming admissions or declarations of undying love? I’m all ears.”

Michael doesn’t know why he feels compelled to do it, but he does it anyway. He’ll recall this moment later when he’s by himself and will cringe at how obvious it was that Ray was only joking, but the present him for some reason takes it seriously. He crosses the few inches between them and grabs at the lapel on Ray’s coat, despite the short snicker that Ray gives at the intensity of Michael’s stare, and tugs on it just slightly, just enough that Ray knows what’s about to happen and can move away if he wants as Michael stares at him.

Truthfully, Michael stares at Ray a lot to begin with, but this is on a new level of staring that verges on leering; he eyes Ray’s mouth for a full two seconds that feel like years before he braces his other hand on the back of Ray’s head and pulls him that much closer, feeling the hitch in Ray’s breath against his mouth before he even hears it.

They slot together easily, their shared height making the kiss feel more like puzzles falling into place than anything else. He kisses Ray square on the mouth and it’s like he’s released the floodgates, because suddenly Ray is just all over him and _there_. He’s never pictured Ray like this — so frenzied — but it’s a welcomed surprise and he finds himself moving his hands to cup Ray’s cheeks, holding onto him as Ray pushes himself against Michael and effectively backs him into the wall.

Ray’s hands move deftly to Michael’s neck and shoulder, gripping onto him as he coaxes Michael’s mouth open and licks away any of the worries he had about the weather or his safety in the hail. When they pull away with gasps for air and press their foreheads together, Ray is the first one to recover fast enough to make words.

“That was one hell of a pick-up line,” Ray mumbles, breath fanning over Michael’s mouth.

“Yeah, I’ll say. Guess I should probably stop joking about how much of a loser you are now, because _holy shit_ , Ray.” Ray punches Michael lightly on the arm and Michael pretends to be shocked. “Never mind, I take it back! You’re such a fucking loser, oh my God.”

Ray kisses Michael for the first time seconds after and they don’t stop kissing until it ceases raining and the hail is left covering the pavement.


End file.
